Bush Plans On Staying The Course On Not Saying 'Stay The Course'

The Bush administration has made what it calls an important pledge in semantics today, when White House spokesman Tony Snow announced that the administration is committed to staying the course on no longer using the phrase "stay the course" in reference to Iraq, although the phrase may be used in other contexts, such as when President Bush is sailing a ship towards a large iceberg.

"Although we were right in saying stay the course, the media distorted it to make us look silly for saying it, so now let me say this: we will stay the course from now on on never saying 'stay the course' ever again," said Snow in an interview on Fox News, which confused many simple Americans who thought that he was no longer the White House Press secretary, and had been reinstated at the network where he used to work.

"Sometimes it's hard to tell where one begins and the other ends," said one viewer with a furrowed brow.

Snow also sought to clear up the history behind the phrase and philosophy, which the President, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, claims to have never used.

"The President is right -- practically nobody in this administration has practically ever said that we were staying the course," said Snow. "And if you want to break it down into little wussy semantics, yes, the President did say that, but it wasn't any more than eight times, and that's even after you divide the actual number of times he said it by less than four."

"Look," Snow added with finality, "we can quibble over what may or may not have been done in the past, but it's important that we stay the course about this phrase, and discussing whether or not we said 'stay the course' in the past is really impeding on our current ability to stay the course in not staying the course."

Last week in Time magazine, Vice President Dick Cheney also retracted a statement he made in May of 2005 about the Iraq insurgency being in its last throes, as well as revealing that he would allow future hunting partners a 10 second head start.

"Yes, it did take me a while to realize that that statement was incorrect, but I had to be sure," he explained. "From May 2005 to just now, it pretty much looked like the insurgency was about done."

Privately, it seems the White House may be concerned and mystified over Iraq's condition. Although a drawing by one of the President's daughters of happy Iraqi citizens shooting flowers out of their mouths at the sight of US soldiers convinced the President to invade the country, he is reportedly confused that the actual outcome is resulting in many more deaths and many less smell-o-ramas than his daughter had projected.

However, sources close to the President also stressed his continued commitment to the country, and said he will "remain on the track".

"Of course, the President will not cut and run," an anonymous White House staffer said. "And when he does, it won't be called that. It'll be called 'freedom from a distance'."

Support of both the President and the war in Iraq has fallen to extremely low levels recently, and some believe this will translate into a Democrat takeover of the House and/or Senate after midterm elections this November.

"Elections are actually in December this year," Tony Snow clarified.

"Democrats are probably going to become the majority party, and I'm glad as hell," said one confident citizen. "They've had all this time to work on a good secret plan to fix all that the Republicans have done, and I'm ready to see it in action."